We are extremely proud that Tran Nguyen’s illustration for Genevieve Valentine’s upcoming Tor.com short story, “Insects of Love,” has won the 2014 Spectrum Fantastic Art gold medal! (A full list of winners here.)

Tran did a spectacular job of encompassing a beautiful and complex story into a single image. The image is a success at every level—emotionally, technically, and conceptually. Author Genevieve Valentine had this to say of the artist’s work, “Tran’s haunting art for ‘The Insects of Love’ is gorgeous; the heroine’s piercing gaze, the use of texture and light, and the leached-out palette are a ghost story all its own. But of course I love seeing my story in the details: one sister seeming to eclipse the other, surrounded (crushed?) by the natural world, unable to quite tell where one begins and the other ends.”